Chapter 3 - The Surgeon’s Scalpel SlipsBy Tuesday afternoon, the pressure inside Harbor Grace Medical Center had reached a boiling point.
Grant stood scrubbed and gowned in Operating Room 4, staring down at an open thoracic cavity. On the heart-lung machine, digital vitals blinked a steady green, but Grant’s hands were slick with sweat inside his latex gloves.
"Suction," Grant snapped, his voice tight.
"Suction, Dr. Hart," the scrub nurse replied. It wasn't Chelsea today; it was a senior nurse named Brenda who had worked at the hospital for twenty years and looked at Grant with undisguised contempt.
"Doctor," Brenda whispered as Grant reached for the vascular clamp. "Your heart rate is elevated. Your hands are shaking. Maybe Dr. Sterling should take over."
"I am fine, Brenda. Focus on your job," Grant hissed, leaning closer to the patient's chest.
He needed a flawless procedure today. CNN was scheduled to interview him on Thursday for a special feature on robotic cardiac surgery. If the media caught wind of the Al-Rashid fallout, his career—and his upcoming appointment as Chief of Surgery—would evaporate into smoke.
He reached for the suture, his mind racing back to Mara. Where was she? Did she really have proof? No. She was just a background figure. She didn't have the stomach for a fight.
"Dr. Hart," Brenda warned sharply. "The arterial line pressure is dropping. You're cutting too close to the descending aorta."
"I know what I'm doing!" Grant snarled, making a rapid, aggressive cut.
Rip.
The sickening sound of tearing tissue filled the sterile room. A jet of bright red arterial blood sprayed across the surgical field, splattering against Grant’s face shield.
"My God! He's lacerated the aorta!" an anesthesiologist shouted, alarms screaming in a deafening crescendo. "BP is crashing! 60 over 40!"
"Clamp! Give me a vascular clamp!" Grant yelled, panic seizing his throat. Sweat poured down his temples, stinging his eyes. He reached blindly into the cavity, his fingers slipping on the slick, pulsing muscle. He tried to place the clamp, but his hands were shaking so violently he missed the vessel entirely.
"Doctor, you're making it worse! You're tearing the wall!" Brenda shouted, shoving him aside with surprising force. "Code Blue! Get Dr. Sterling in here now!"
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Grant stumbled backward against the instrument tray, sending surgical steel crashing to the tile floor. He stared down at his blood-soaked gloves, hyperventilating as the monitors wailed their dying song.
For the first time in his life, the great Dr. Grant Hart was helpless.
